


Homecoming

by iolanthe_rosa



Category: Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-01-31
Updated: 2004-01-31
Packaged: 2017-11-20 01:22:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/579747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iolanthe_rosa/pseuds/iolanthe_rosa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life is hard, life is sweet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Homecoming

My manager died of AIDS when I was 13. Dad left home when I was 14. Zach moved out when I was 15. They say men don’t leave, but they fucking do.

In New Zealand, sometimes, I felt like the little bird in that kid’s book. You know, “Are You My Mother?” Except for me, it was “Are you my father?” Ian? Sean? PJ? Viggo? Are you my father? In the book, the little bird finds its mother in the end. But I never found my father. And you know what? Turns out most of those guys were looking for their fathers, too. Maybe that’s just what guys do.

I didn’t find my father in New Zealand, but I found Dom. People talk about the healing power of love. Well, it doesn’t cure everything, but it really does help.

Dom’s whole family is short and funny and fun to be with, but his dad has this look he gets sometimes. When he trains that look on Dom, Dom shuts up. It’s the only thing in the world that can shut Dom up. The funny thing is, I guess it’s genetic, because Dom has the same look. He’s never used it on me, thankfully. Mostly he uses it on guys who try to hit on me. Works every time. Height isn’t everything, you know. Not if you’ve got The Look.

If we ever have kids, I know Dom’s going to use The Look on them and it’s going to work. The best part is, it’s quiet. The yelling was what I always hated most. Our kids are going to have two fathers, and one of them is going to have The Look and there’s not going to be any yelling. It’s going to be good.

Dom left twice. The first time was after Franka. He said he didn’t get it. He just didn’t get it and he had limits. He was always such a fucking drama queen and I knew he was going to leave eventually. It was kind of a relief to get it over with.

I don’t know why I thought it would be a relief if he left. It fucking hurt. That was when I realized that your soul doesn’t belong to you; someone can walk right out the door with it. I read somewhere about how losing your partner is like losing a limb. For me, it was more like losing all my limbs and my head. “Pick up the pieces, just pick up the pieces.” But there weren’t any pieces to pick up; just this black hole that used to be me. That used to be us.

I had a lot of time to think while Dom was gone.

At first he had been grateful I knew all the rules. I helped him. Here’s what you say what you don’t say how you say it. Here’s how you behave at a party at a press conference at a meeting. Here’s how you pose for this kind of picture that kind of camera. Smile here don’t smile there. Use this word not that word. Rules rules rules. So many rules and I knew them all. I was such a goddamned expert on the rules, I started making them up as I went along, built myself a house of rules, each rule a brick, until I was trapped inside it and Dom was trapped in there with me. No wonder he felt like he needed to escape.

It never occurred to me that he would come back. But he did. He came back.

I was so happy and relieved, I started tearing that house of rules down, brick by brick. I wore his ring. I talked about him to the press. I touched him in public. I said things I shouldn’t have said. I scared the shit out of myself.

Turns out, everyone I know has their own version of The Look, and now I was getting it all the time, from my mother, my manager, my agent, my publicist. No one ever said anything. It was always just The Look. I couldn’t stand it, all the disapproval. No one had ever given me The Look before. I thought I was going to die. I never got The Look from Dom, that’s for sure. He loved watching me tear that house down. But somehow that didn’t count. Dom was frustrated. “Why is my approval less important than theirs?” he grumbled.

I didn’t know. My brick house was razed to the ground and I didn’t know anything anymore except that now that it was gone, I really missed that house.

The second time Dom left was after C4. He had fucked up. Even he said so, but he thought I should have supported him anyway, like he had supported me all along. I wasn’t feeling good, had just had my appendix out, and I was tired. So tired. And he was being a fucking drama queen again. And Sean was in my face, and what’s so wrong with trying to make everyone happy?

I suppose it should not have come as such a big revelation to me that it is, in fact, impossible to make everyone happy. But it took me 22 years to figure that one out. I kept thinking there must be a way; if I just kept trying, I’d find a way.

One winter, when Dom and I went to visit his family in England, Dom’s brother Matt was there. I was sitting on the floor alone in the living room, looking through Dom’s parents’ old record collection. Dom’s dad came in from the kitchen with Dom and Matt. He had an arm around each of his sons’ shoulders as he steered them into the room. They were laughing about something. I looked up at them from my spot on the floor. It felt like I was separated from them by a sheet of glass, like I was watching a t.v. show: “The Monaghan Family.”

Later during that visit, Dom’s dad was in the living room looking out the window. “Hey, look,” he said, “Come here.” Dom and I joined him at the window. A flock of robins had crowded into a leafless tree in the middle of their garden. There were so many of them, it looked like the whole tree was moving, fluttering and flashing red and brown in the grey Manchester light. He draped an arm around each of our shoulders and said, “It’s Spring, lads.” I was looking steadily at the tree, but I could hear the smile in his voice.

Sometimes I can still feel the weight of his arm resting on my shoulder.

I really didn’t think Dom would come back after the C4 thing. When he came back the first time, after Franka, that had just been a fluke. But he did it again: he came back.

Dom had had a lot of time to think while he was gone.

At first, he knew steady work in the U.S. would be hard to find. He had known it, then forgotten it, and now he knew it again. I think having to stand back and watch him go through that process was as painful for me as it was for him. I wondered if he was aware of that, aware of me watching him make mistakes and not saying anything. That’s what a good father would do, I thought. Let you make your own mistakes, but suffer right along with you. I wondered if his father was doing that in Manchester right now. I wondered if he was doing that for both of us.

At first, Dom had thought being with me was more important than acting, so he was willing to move to L.A. and take his chances. But now he knew acting was just as important to him as being with me. And that meant he would have to make some changes. It meant he would have to follow some rules.

So together we are building a new house with new rules. It’s actually quite cool. It’s not just one house. It’s lots of houses. Because life is complicated and you can’t make everyone happy all the time.

The house in New Zealand is our house. It’s where we do whatever we want whenever we want however we want in public and in private. It’s home. It’s where Dom is going to give our kids The Look one day.

New York is my house; I can smoke in it and swear in it and it’s wired with CAT-9 and decorated with computer equipment and sound equipment and there are jewel cases and ash on every surface. I can work from there and it’s an easy flight to London or L.A. Dom likes New York and so do I.

Our time in L.A. is over. A lot of good things happened there and a lot of bad things. My mom’s still there. But it was never really home.

The London place is Dom’s. He can do theater there and see his friends and family. Dom hasn’t made up the rules for the London place yet, but whatever they are, I’ll abide by them. Because we make the rules together now.

***

I’m an anxious person. I chew my nails and I smoke. I obsess about things. I worry about the future. I fret about the past.

Sometimes Dom will pull my hand away from my mouth. He’s always gentle when he does it. “Say it,” he prompts.

Then I say it. “Be here now.”

Then he says it. “Be here now.”

It’s our little ritual. Hold hands and exchange our be-here-nows. Sometimes we kiss afterwards and sometimes we laugh. And sometimes we’re just quiet. But last time it happened, I finally said what I had been wanting to say for a long time.

“No more leaving, okay?”

Even when I said it, I was not sure whether it was a question or a command or a prayer.

Dom kissed me. “No, baby, the leaving’s all done.”

Dom knows things about me no one else knows. Things about my mind and my heart and my body. Things I don’t ever want to share with anyone else.

When he says he’s not going to leave again, I believe him.


End file.
